PROGRESS OF THE DELIVERING DIFFERENTLY TO NEIGHBOURHOODS PROGRAMME

 

Members noted the following key points of the report:

 

Ø  The report set out the progress to date and the next steps.

Ø  It asked Members to endorse the progress so far.

Ø  The Council was committed to transparency and localism.

Ø  13 of 14 parish councils delivered at least three services.

Ø  In January 2014, the council was successful in obtaining funding for the programme.

Ø  The project set out to deliver feasibility study working collaboratively with parish councils.

Ø  The programme was identifying ideas for the future and sought solutions to potential barriers.

Ø  The programme had received feedback via the parish forum; governance had been one issue that had come up so the team were working closely with parishes to come up with creative solutions.

Ø  The benefits of the programme reinforced manifesto commitments to work with parishes.

Ø  Progress to date included:

o   At the start of the programme, the team contacted Cornwall and Buckinghamshire councils and learned good practice and found there were areas the team could work on that they had not previously thought of.

o   As an authority, the council was taking a different approach; it was not about trying to save money or to cut services.

o   The team gained an insight into devolution.

o   Workshops had been held with parish councils.

o   A consultation had been carried out parish by parish.

o   Improved communication channels.

o   There was a desire to get better information on services carried out by the council.

o   The team were running bite sized sessions for parish councils to answer any queries.

o   DALC and BALC had both been involved with the programme.

o   Highways contracts going out to tender with a clause contractors must work with parish and town councils. It will be specifically explained to the contractor so they knew what was expected.

o   The framework for the tender process will be released so that other councils could learn from it.

o   There were some volunteers from the parish conference who offered to engage with the procurement process  which would enhance the process.

o   The team had been listening to parish councils and they were building into the process good standards of working practice.

o   The programme would continue to engage with parishes and meetings with individual parish councillors had been taking place and information had been provided to them on services. Parish councils had been providing feedback on that information on how they could devolve services.

o   The parish councils should start to see actions by spring 2016.

 

The Head of Neighbourhood & Streetscene Delivery confirmed that following feedback from parish councils, they wanted to see a designated person they could contact regarding services that had been devolved. He added he had been looking at what could be implemented quickly and then once in place, they could look at a more longer term solution.

 

The Chairman requested a list of services which had been successfully taken up by parish councils; the Vice-Chairman requested the contact details of a parish liaison officer to be included in the next report on the Delivering Differently to Neighbourhoods report. The Head of Neighbourhood & Streetscene Delivery confirmed he was looking to continue the menu of services on offer but was also tailoring the offering to parishes that worked for them. Some of the services on offer might not have been applicable to all parishes. With regards to the highways contract, all authorities had highways contracts so the borough was not unique but, where the borough would be unique is in the tendering document; any potential contractors would have to liaise with parish councils. Flexibility was to be built into the process so whoever won the contract would know what was to be expected. That would build on the councils vanguard status. Cllr Grey commented it was encouraging to hear the lengths the borough was going to to try and sell the devolution of services to parish councils.

 

Cllr Rankin queried whether the Windsor and Eton Town Partnership Board would be offered a similar programme as Windsor town was a non-parished area. The Head of Neighbourhood & Streetscene Delivery confirmed it was part of the programme to look at how to devolve services to non-parished areas. Conversations had taken place with Cllr Bathurst on how to devolve services for those areas. The Head of Neighbourhood & Streetscene Delivery had also requested the leader to pilot devolution to the Windsor UK group; there was a lot of potential in that area. The Chairman stated it was important to get ward councillors involved too.

 

v  Action: for a list of services taken up by parishes to be included in the report for the next Big Society Panel meeting.

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That Members:

 

1.  Noted Progress on the Delivering Differently in Neighbourhoods project and endorsed the future actions outlined in the report.

2.  Endorsed discussions with Windsor UK be bought forward to the earliest opportunity so the group may be added to the menu and for ward councillors to be involved in the process.

 

 

LONELINESS UPDATE

 

The Community & Business Partnerships Manager introduced the report and gave a brief update which included the following key points:

 

Ø  The report highlighted details of work that had been undertaken by the council with partners to address the problem of loneliness in the borough.

Ø  Workshops had taken place and a plan of action had been produced.

Ø  Terms of Reference had been established for the steering group and several meetings had been scheduled.

Ø  There were two areas to work in collaboratively:

o   To make people aware of services available.

o   To plug gaps in services where gaps were found.

Ø  Areas identified as greatest risk were listed in the report.

Ø  It was a manifesto commitment to address the impacts of loneliness.

Ø  The project tried to identify the biggest challenges, so the project started working with older people and then move on to address younger lonely people.

Ø  The project used the JSNA ward profiles available for each of the boroughs wards and compared one ward against another.

Ø  The project remained a borough-wide project, although it would initially focus on the areas of greatest need.

Ø  There had been good engagement from different partners and the project had tried to communicate the services already available.

Ø  An information leaflet had been produced that was also available online.

Ø  The project addressed the number of visits to GPs and worked with Public Health to produced information for GPs to signpost lonely people to appropriate services.

Ø  The project was also working with care homes in the adopt-a-home scheme.

Ø  The project celebrated Silver Fortnight.

Ø  There was no impact on budget as the project was about coordinating services and was done through existing budgets. However lead, should funding be required at a later date, the lead member for the project may come back and request funding in the future.

Ø  There was a heat map produced which showed the largest concentrations of loneliness in the borough. There were other areas but, they were starting with the largest numbers first.

Ø  A combination of factors made up the heat map such as those without cars, long term sick, disabled, the over 65s.

Ø  There were lonely people in other areas of the borough, but the areas mapped were the highest concentrations. There was a long list of characteristics that made up loneliness such as assisted bin collections or falls. It was not an exact science.

 

Cllr Rankin stated it was good to hear the emphasis of the project was on partner collaboration. The Community & Business Partnerships Manager confirmed this was a joint project being undertaken with Adult Services as well as other outside organisations such as the Fire and Rescue Service. Cllr Grey commented that since the issue of loneliness had first been raised a lot of work had been done which was encouraging.

 

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That Members:

 

1.    Noted and commented on the progress made in progressing the actions and activities detailed within the action plan.

2.    Noted and commented on the findings of the mapping activity and ‘heat map’ produced to highlight the wards having the largest concentration of residents groups  likely to experience loneliness. They had been identified as being Oldfield, Clewer South, Eton Wick and Clewer North.

3.    Endorsed a recommendation that the wards detailed above are identified as initial pilot areas for local intervention and that a plan of intervention with clear milestones, outcomes success measures and partners responsibilities are produced for each area.

4.    To also remember after looking at concentrations of loneliness already identified, to look into concentrations of loneliness in rural areas of the borough.

 

OVERVIEW OF POLICY COMMITTEE WORK PROGRAMME

 

Details of the work programme for the Policy Committee were noted.

 

BIG SOCIETY PROJECT UPDATE

 

Devolution to Parishes

 

Members were referred to page 1 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted that Devolution to Parishes had already been discussed earlier in the meeting.

 

Adopt A Street

 

Members were referred to page 1 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  A newsletter had been circulated to all volunteers.

Ø  A brief questionnaire had also been circulated asking volunteers how the borough could make volunteering easier.

Ø  The Community & Business Partnerships Manager said he would check volunteer targets based on the target date of March 2016 and confirm them with the Panel at the next meeting.

 

Participatory Budgeting

 

Neighbourhood Budgets:

 

Members were referred to page 2 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  1843 votes had been cast.

Ø  A new round of voting commenced on 20 August 2015 and would run until 14 October 2015.

Ø  There were 15 projects in the current voting round.

 

Greenredeem PB Scheme:

 

Ø  the first round for the new scheme ended in September 2015.

Ø  25 groups were taking part.

Ø  3.5m points had been donated so far.

Ø  Half a million points had been donated in the last week.

 

Member Budgets:

 

Ø  15 Councillors had spent some or all of their budget.

Ø  £10,000 had been spent so far.

Ø  All Members had been written to regarding spending or allocating their budgets.

 

Youth Participatory Budget:

 

Ø  Online voting had taken place between 18 May and 1 June 2015.

Ø  Winners would be announced on 8 June 2015.

Ø  An update would be brought back to the next Panel meeting.

 

 

Transparency

 

Members were referred to page 4 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  There were 160 opportunities from 70 different organisations advertised on the WAM Get Involved website.

Ø  A recent meeting had taken place to review the website with minor changes to be made.

Ø  The business section of the website were to be given a higher priority.

Ø  the team would continue to promote the WAM Get Involved website.

 

Recruitment to Parishes

 

Members were referred to page 5 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

 

Ø  At 15 September there were three vacancies on parish councils unfilled following the May 2015 elections.

 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

 

Members were referred to page 5 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  CSR was an ongoing project and a second CSR event would be held in 2015.

Ø  There were nine corporate volunteering projects running since the last Big Society Panel.

 

Bright Idea Challenge Prize

 

Members were referred to page 6 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  The 2015/16 competition was launched on 22 September 2015 and would be open for entries until 30 October 2015.

Ø  The ambassadors for the 2015/16 competition were Windsor Resident Roz Savage, the first woman to row solo across three oceans, and her partner Howard Luck, an environmental campaigner.

Ø  To date, 30 ideas had been submitted.

Ø  Park Run, from the 2014 competition was up and running and doing very well.

 

Start Your Own Business

 

Members were referred to page 8 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  One Strive course had taken place already.

Ø  Two more courses were planned.

Ø  The next course was funded by Housing Solutions.

Ø  Radian were contributing in kind by providing champions and paying for their residents courses.

 

Pledgebank

 

Members were referred to page 8 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

v  There had been three active pledges set up through Pledgebank.

v  Marketing and advertising was being developed through the use of social media.

 

Developing Social Enterprise

 

Members were referred to page 8 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted the key points of the update included:

Ø  There had been two applications for Social Enterprise Grant Funding since March 2015 which the Working Party would need to discuss as soon as possible. They were:

o   Ways into Work – a former Council Service that had been established as a social enterprise.

o   WAMDSAD – is the commercial arm of SportAble. They were seeking funding to establish a new enterprise that would deliver specialist team building exercise focused round opportunity for employees to experience disability sports.

 

Loneliness

 

Members were referred to page 9 of Appendix A for a tabled breakdown of the current actions / next steps, SMART objectives and the Key Risks / Issues / Barriers. 

 

Members noted that Devolution to Parishes had already been discussed earlier in the meeting.

 

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That:

1. Members noted and commented on the progress of the projects.